You know, even though some of these ideas might not work, I really like what I'm reading because they're creative. It's hard for me to think of updates to the engineer.
But what helps thinking of his biggest drawbacks, which I'm sure will be the main things Valve tries to address:
- When you're an engineer and you've set up your sentry to guard the intelligence or the last control point, gameplay gets REALLY boring as you wait for the fight to reach you. But if you leave to help your team, your sentry could get destroyed.
- It only takes one too many engineers with sentries set up in the same area to turn a good match into a stalemate.
I don't know how to address that last one. But for the first one I was thinking of some kind of remote-control device. I think it would be cool if you were just guarding your sentry and you could deploy a remote-control car of some kind to go explore and fight to a limited extent. The engineer himself would be fully vulnerable while he controlled the car, but he could relinquish control of the car for a while to check his surroundings, check for spies, or upgrade his buildings, etc. Of course, his car is fully vulnerable during this time.
What I'm not exactly sure of is what the car does. Maybe it has a simple gun strapped to the top of it. Maybe it's a mobile dispenser for healing your team. Maybe it just explodes, and your enemies must destroy it before it gets anywhere near them or their sentries. All I'm sure of is that it can't be too strong, otherwise it would go from being a fun diversion for bored engineers to a replacement for legitimate classes.
